Xavier Le Clerc — Ein Mann ohne Titel

In the organizer's words:

Xavier Le Clerc's Untitled Man is a powerful autobiographical novel about migration and integration.

A conversation with the author Xavier Le Clerc and the translator Christiane Kayser about the novel A Man Without a Title, which was on the Hotlist 2024 and the longlist for the Prix PREMIERE.

An Untitled Man paints a sober picture of France in the 20th century, characterized by colonialism, war, immigration and cultural and social conflicts. A captivating and moving testimony to the history of European migration and integration.

In search of his father's identity: After the death of his father, Xavier Le Clerc set out in search of his father's story. Because his father avoided talking about his childhood and youth throughout his life, Le Clerc reconstructed his life based on Albert Camus' reports from 1939.

Xavier Le Clerc interweaves his father's biography with his own story as a second-generation immigrant child who was confronted with racism and homophobia in everyday life and at the same time had access to an education that his father could not even dream of as a child.

Xavier Le Clerc, born in 1979, was born in Kabylia (Algeria) and grew up in Normandy, on the outskirts of Caen. After studying sociology and literature, he now lives in Paris, where he combines writing with his work in the fashion industry. He has already published several short stories and a first novel under his birth name Hamid Aït-Taleb. He has already published his second novel, Cent vingt francs, in which he remembers his great-grandfather, under the name Xavier Le Clerc.

Christiane Kayser, born in Luxembourg in 1954, studied economics in Paris as well as education, sociology and psychology in Marburg and Cologne. As a specialist for the Third World, she has regularly traveled to Central and West Africa since 1984. She has also worked for decades as a translator of Tahar Ben Jelloun, Vautrin, Benacquista, Fouad Laroui, Boualem Sansal and Jean Genet, among others. Christiane Kayser lives and works alternately in Berlin, Africa and in a village near Toulouse. Christiane Kayser was awarded the Niedersächsische Übersetzungsstipendium for her translation work on the novel Ein Mann ohne Titel.

Moderated by Julie Tirard.

The conversation will be translated into German by Daniel Bintener.

Event in cooperation with the Leipzig Book Fair.